Henrik Hassel

Henrik Hassel (12 November 1700 – 18 August 1776) was a Finnish professor at the Royal Academy of Turku.

Around 1714, during the period called the "Great Hate", or Russian occupation of Finland, the family moved to Strängnäs, Sweden where Hassel studied.

In 1732 he wrote De fabulis philosophorum (On the Philosophers' Tales) where he criticized René Descartes and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.

[2] In his De immunitate religionis a coactione (On freedom from religious coercion) he argued that parents and authorities should not force the adoption of religion.

In 1745 he claimed that science could only be done in Latin but three years later, a treatise called De linguis eruditis (On the language of the learned) was published by a student in which he now noted that Latin was needed earlier to subdue barbarism and that it had become an obstacle to science.